Rural Communities’ Healthcare Governance Partnerships: a Lay Participant Perspective”

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Date
2015-09-01
Journal Title
Journal ISSN
Volume Title
Publisher
The Second Annual Conference of the Social Sciences (August 31 to September 1 2015)
Abstract
This paper analyzes the capability and influence of rural community actors in community-based healthcare governance partnerships, namely the Health Facility Governance Committees (HFGCs) using the Lay Participant perspective. Practical evidences are drawn from a mixed methods study conducted in Karagwe and Morogoro districts between May 2013 and March 2015. The analysis shows that all community actors, especially individual community members, community representatives, elected community leaders, informal community groups, and Civil Society Organizations (CSOs) as well as Non-Governmental Organizations (NGOs) have pertinent weaknesses that make them unable to contribute effectively towards enforcing accountability of public officials and health services providers. The main reason is that, the design and social context of rural communities make partnerships for empowerment partnerships for disempowerment. In conclusion, community-based healthcare governance partnerships cannot work best in the current context of Tanzanian rural communities. Therefore, there is a need for rational capacity building interventions aimed at empowering all the defined community actors and transformational redesign of the community healthcare governance systems.
Description
Keywords
Community-Based Accountability; Rural Communities; Community-Health Partnerships, Health Facility Commitees; Tanzania.
Citation
7. Damian, R.S. (2015), “Rural Communities’ Healthcare Governance Partnerships: a Lay Participant Perspective”, a Paper Presented during the 2nd Voice of Social Science International Conference to be held from 29 August to 1 September 2015 at Bank of Tanzania Conference Centre, Dar es Salaam, Tanzania